Typing Old English
Letters not on a standard keyboard If you do not have a customised keyboard or other quick way of doing it, the distinct letters used in Englisc can be typed using Alt+{number} Normal letters Vowels with macrons In authentic texts, vowels do not bear macrons. For study purposes, they are used and so might be of use here. Customising your keyboard Macintosh OS X Version 1: For Macintosh OS X, you can place this custom-made keyboard layout into your Library > Keyboard Layouts folder, and then activate it by choosing Anglo-Saxon under your System Preferences > International menu after restarting. The file is available here. The acute accent is alt+e then the vowel, macron is alt+a then the vowel, ȝ''' is '''alt+y, and ƿ''' is '''alt+w. Capital versions of the letters are done by using shift+ the letter needed. And for those interested in the exotic Runic script, its keyboard layout file can be found here. It will appear as Anglo-Saxon Runic under your International pane. This layout corresponds almost identically to the Anglo-Saxon layout. Version 2: On the OE Wikipedia, "User:Spuntothratboy" announced his own keyboard layout file: Macintosh OS X Old English keyboard (he says "no guarantees or warrantees etc", and so do we: Gemotstow has not tested this). It is based on the standard British keyboard layout, and includes æ , þ , ð , ȝ , ƿ , and dead keys for macrons and overdots, as well as the Tironian Et, þ with a stroke, and a middot (authentically used as a comma). Autocorrects An alternative, to avoid mucking your keyboard settings up, is to type text in Microsoft Word or similar. Programme a series of "Autocorrect" options, but make sure they will not be triggered accidentally while typing something else. The "#" symbol is useful. For example: *''th#'' might autocorrect to þ''' (the capital is dealt with by the programme). *''dh#'' to '''ð *''ae'' to æ''' *''a-#'' to '''ā Further in that case: *''thaet'' can become þæt *''thaere'' can become þære *''odde'' can become oððe - and so forth These ought not to be disruptive to the everyday business use of a computer, but if the latter examples do get in the way, they may be programmed as autocorrects in another language (Icelandic, perhaps) so when you come to compose in Englisc over your lunchtime, you just have to switch the text language to Icelandic to enjoy the convenient autocorrects. (For my own purposes I have programmed a macro which puts all these autocorrects onto a computer, and many more to deal with the needs of Englisc all the major European languages. Whenever the IT people reset my machine, I can run the macro and restore them!) - RB Letters and Characters: Towards a standard? Computer programmers and policy-makers cannot assume a monolingual, Californian-English web. They must accommodate other languages and that includes Old English, for academic reasons as much as anything else. The languages of Europe and beyond which use the Latin alphabet have a great many accented letters and letters going beyond the ASCII 26, but to accommiodate them one need only know what they are and an adequate standard can be adopted. A list of those letters and accents is to be found at: :Letters and characters: Towards a standard The only additional letter which could better accommodate Old English usage is ƿ, and arguably a barred þ. The one additional symbol would be a Tironian and, usually written '7' for lack of a genuine representation (Unicode U+204A). Category:Language